Biological cycle
Running on surplus Consider a cherry tree on a warm spring afternoon, its branches billowing with a profusion of perfumed, pink petals, buzzing with the sound of busy bees. But isn’t this nature at its most profligate and wasteful? Surely the cherry tree only needs to produce two offspring in its lifetime in order to have completed its evolutionary duty – why all this surplus? The truth is that a single cherry stick with a single flower isn’t much of a turn on for the bee and won’t provide much of a shelter for a blackbird nest either. Let’s see why none of the cherry tree’s hard work is wasted. The co-evolution of biological systems The cherry tree uses the sun’s energy to fix inorganic carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil to make glucose in a process called photosynthesis. This sugar is then transformed into all of the other materials the plant needs to grow, including, cellulose, proteins, lipids and lignin, etc. All of these materials are required to build a strong healthy tree that can reproduce itself. Of the many reproductive strategies available the cherry tree has thrown its lot in with the bees. They pollinate the flowers which turn in to the fruits which hold the seeds. If two of these seeds grow into mature adults the cherry tree has done its job. But what about all that surplus of materials leaves, petals, pollen and nectar year after year? The cherry tree has not evolved by adapting to its system – rather it has co-evolved with a system that includes other plants, animals, fungi and microbes. It is these other organisms that consume every piece of cherry tree surplus and ensure that biological nutrients continue to cycle. Once processed by these food chains, carbon dioxide and water return to the atmosphere and the minerals return to the soil from where they came. These local systems form part of larger biological systems in nature. At an ecosystem level organisms can be seen as metabolists, constantly gathering and processing materials before releasing them back into the environment. Over the millennia co-evolution has finely tuned these systems ensuring that no waste accumulates over long periods of time. Biological chemicals are built around the common elements of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. They rarely include transition metals (a notable exception is iron) and never incorporate toxic elements like mercury or cadmium which are favoured in many industrial processes. This means that biological cycles do not accumulate toxins as a rule. In isolated incidents co-evolution has developed poisonous chemicals that may protect plants or are used to kill prey. But these chemicals are mostly alkaloids that are biodegradable and are quickly dispersed in the systems. As biological cycles spin, ecosystems accumulate nutrients, biomass increases and soil deepens. Natural capital increases as life creates conditions conducive to life. *Biological systems are characterised by the following: *They are powered by sunshine *They run on a surplus where ‘waste’ becomes food *They build or restore natural capital Biological decoupling Because humans are organisms we too engage with the biological cycle. As hunter-gatherers we took what resources we needed directly from nature and returned them as biological nutrients to cycles in just the same way as all other organisms. But our relationship with the biological cycle has become fractured. Our current oil fuelled economy allows us to draw down and process natural resources at a much faster rate. Forests are now felled on an industrial scale and their nutrients lost from the system. Often where forests once stood monocultures now reduce biodiversity and denude the soil. Oil has also allowed us to make completely new types of material that can’t be processed by the biological cycle. Products made from plastics, metals and alloys accumulate as waste when they are finished because they cannot be processed as biological nutrients. The biological cycle is also unable to remove the toxic transition metals, so favoured by current industrial processes, which can build up and damage natural systems. Engagement In order to re-engage effectively with biological systems we need to completely rethink how we make and grow things. We need to consider how we are going to re-purpose materials after they have performed their job in their current form. Here are some guidelines as to how we might do it: *Ensure that biological products are optimised through energy and material cascades. *Use the biological cycle as a model for developing technical cycles that feed on technical nutrients. *Design products that allow for the easy separation of biological and technical nutrients. *Prevent distortions of the carbon cycle by using solar energy. *Encourage diverse agricultural practices that retain biological nutrients and build natural capital.